


Orbiting Situla Secunda

by Rubynye



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 02:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day became two became more than a week, and they kept not talking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orbiting Situla Secunda

**Author's Note:**

> Content Advisory: Bruises, angst, apologies, and a kiss.  
> Acknowledgements: [](http://secretsolitaire.livejournal.com/profile)[**secretsolitaire**](http://secretsolitaire.livejournal.com/), for whom I wrote this. [](http://1297.livejournal.com/profile)[**1297**](http://1297.livejournal.com/), who recced this. [](http://thistlerose.livejournal.com/profile)[**thistlerose**](http://thistlerose.livejournal.com/), [who inspired me](http://thistlerose.livejournal.com/1100471.html) (after you read my little tale, go read her splendid story on the same topic). And always and ever, [](http://lomedet.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://lomedet.livejournal.com/)**lomedet**.

Title: Orbiting Situla Secunda  
Fandom: Star Trek XI  
Rating: Light R  
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, Jocelyn/Leonard mentioned.  
Summary: One day became two became more than a week, and they kept not talking.  
_Disclaimer:_ None of the canon characters or their settings belong to me.

 

To outward appearances, Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, CMO of the _USS Enterprise_, sits at his office desk concentrating on his padd. He may be reading an article on recombinant retroviruses, or perusing an update from the Situlan Medical Science League on their progress in mopping up the Kastra Fever outbreak, or grimly surveying the mortality and morbidity rates charted against date, age, gender and blood type.

What Leonard is actually doing is staring sightlessly at his message log while tonguing the inside of his bottom lip, which Captain James T. Kirk bit into a bruise at approximately 2315 hours last night.

Jim hasn't come by Sickbay to be healed of his own souvenirs, bitten and squeezed into his skin after he walked into Leonard's quarters like he owned the place. Leonard got up to tell him off for it, and maybe lance the subcutaneous resentment that's been festering between them, and Jim grabbed his wrists and slammed their mouths together, seizing the first and last word in a hard kiss.

So Leonard bit him, and Jim bit him back and knocked his knees out from beneath him, and they crashed to the floor in a heap and fucked like a fight, nipping and tearing at each other in a mess of shoved-aside clothes and throbbing bruises until they both came. Then Jim went limp and panting under Leonard, which is how he realized he had Jim's wrists pinned to the floor over his head, that he was squeezing so hard he could feel the bones grinding. He opened his eyes, and Jim's were wide and heartbreakingly blue, focused on his face.

Leonard's fingers uncurled and he threw himself back. Jim yanked his legs free and scrambled to his feet, pulled his clothes together, and strode out. And neither of them had said a word.

Now, Leonard shuts his eyes against the new articles on strategies for vaccine design, the emails from the Situlans reporting on their progress and effusively thanking him, the spreadsheets he's prepared from the casualty reports. He runs his tongue once more over the blood-hot tatter of flesh backing his lip, and wonders if Jim has his tunic sleeves pulled down over his bruised wrists, imagines Jim's tongue stroking the chewed upper corner of his full mouth. Leonard thinks of Jim, tries to pull up fury, frustration, resentment, and finds only weary longing.

They'd thought about it individually. They'd talked it over together, holding padds and cups of coffee at midmorning, in bed at midnight, over dinners and lunches. How to be friends, how to be more, when they needed to perform as Captain and CMO as well. They've done pretty well so far, agreeing to disagree, Jim listening more than Leonard had expected, Leonard deferring to Jim's authority.

Then, barbing the tail end of a series of disasters, they hit the Kastra Fever outbreak sweeping Situla Secunda. Leonard remembers it, filling their morgues, filling his inbox, and feels the polymer padd case creak beneath his tightening fingers. He knows he could've helped them turn the tide earlier, could've saved more lives if he'd just been able to examine patients and samples on the ground, if Jim had -- if _Captain Kirk_ had let him beam down to do his goddamn job.

Jim hadn't. Backed up by that pointy-eared superprocessor of a First Officer, he'd dismissed violating the quarantine as too dangerous and told Leonard to confer with the Situlans from shipboard. Leonard had offered to wear a clunky enviro suit and Jim shot that down with, "What good can you do in it that you can't from up here?"

To be honest, as Leonard regards his dim reflection in the padd's screen, he could have shut up then and taken his orders, he didn't have to push. But he pushed, telling Jim that he would do his job, bureacratically-imposed quarantines be damned. Jim's eyes glinted as he folded his arms and threatened to confine Leonard to quarters, and Leonard couldn't stop himself from asking, "What, Jim, you'll send me to my room? What else've you got, sentencing me to bed without supper?"

He'd expected Jim to yell or laugh or tease him. But Jim's eyes went flinty, and the coldness of, "Doctor, you're out of line," knocked the wind out of Leonard. By the time he could breathe again, Jim had turned away from him, Jim was gone.

And that was that. A little nothing of a fight, but one day became two became more than a week, and they kept not talking. Leonard advised the Situlans from shipboard, itching to feel the exact swollen firmness of patients' lymph nodes and observe precisely what reduction in skin discoloration was meant by "slightly improved," but muffled through distance and working through others' hands he fought the plague until they found a vulnerable step in the virus's infectious pathway, and then a way to create a vaccine that the virus couldn't mutate away from.

All that, as well as normal ship's business, breaks and bruises and burns and contusions, kept Leonard too busy to visit the Bridge, busy enough to not see Jim. He only went up once, when the Situlan Council asked for him so they could thank him on the viewscreen, and Jim was normal, professional, ebullient and frustratingly distant, until as he was dismissed Leonard looked back and caught Jim watching him with eyes opaque as polished turquoise.

Across Sickbay the door whickers open. Leonard jerks upright, but it's just Nurse Tehillidar returning from his break. Leonard grumbles soundlessly and shakes his head, glaring at his reflection in the padd's screen. He should concentrate, he should read his goddamn email, he should stop mooning over Jim, who's busy Captaining. If they actually had a rematch Leonard knows exactly what both of them would say.

Except that then he feels a familiar pang, as he remembers thinking that about Jocelyn, and he fails to set the padd down gently, its clatter onto the desk echoing in his small office. There were the fights, and then the silences, because neither of them wanted more fights, because Leonard was so sure he knew every word they'd say. Until the day she came to him and said his name, and he shook his head and started to tell her she didn't have to say it, he knew, and she slammed her hand on the table.

"No," she snarled, "You don't. I was gonna tell you--" and she stood up, pulling her dignity around her like a forcefield he could never touch her through. "I was going to say, I'm sorry about your father, I'm sorry I didn't understand." But she hissed it, eyes glinting, and walked away as Leonard stared after her.

He stares at the padd lying between his curled hands, remembers two pairs of angry beautiful eyes, and stands up.

Sitting at the duty station, Dr. Villanueva glances up from her own padd just long enough to flick a salute and a smile his way. "Goodnight, Dr. McCoy," she murmurs, and he nods in return, not breaking stride. It's a quiet evening, the corridors softly glowing and near empty, and the bruise under Leonard's lip throbs as he worries it with his tongue and doesn't let his steps falter.

Of course, Jim's quarters are dark and empty. "Damn it all, where the Hell is he," Leonard mutters to himself as he spins, about to scurry the length and breadth of the ship searching him out, before he remembers he can just _ask_. "Computer, location of Captain James T. Kirk?"

The computer's sweet synthetic voice recites Leonard's shipboard address, adding "Quarters of Chief Medical Officer Leonard H. McCoy," for good effect. But Leonard's already running.

His door opens and Jim's on the other side, a step away from leaving. The room's dim, only 25% lights, and Jim's eyes shine with bottomless clarity before he drops his head, chuckling as he shakes it. "Hey, Bones."

Leonard steps in and locks the door with a word, leaning back against it. "Just make yourself at home," sounds much more sarcastic than he means, but Jim just looks up at him, nose still pointed at the floor, hands easy at his sides. A simple "Jim," gets him to lift his chin.

"Leonard," Jim says unexpectedly, seriously, and he wants to shake his head, to apologize, to forestall every word. But he swallows, pushing down the apprehension roiling his belly, and nods, and lets Jim talk. "I'm not -- I don't retract that judgement call, it was the right decision, but I didn't want it to do -- this." Jim's gesture ends in a move that might be a truncated reach forward, before his hand pulls back to his side. "I'm sorry it did."

"So am I," Leonard replies, and his words are so used to coming out sharp that Jim flinches minutely, in the set of his face and the rigidity of his shoulders, and Leonard sees and flinches too. Jim parts his lips, but Leonard shakes his head and pushes himself off the door, standing at attention. "Captain," he says, just as seriously, "I was insubordinate, and I apologize." Jim's eyes widen, oval and getting rounder, but he nods in acceptance. "Jim," and Leonard can't keep looking at Jim any more than he could stare into the Sun, so he focuses on a dark corner and keeps himself talking. "I didn't mean for it to get this bad either. I miss you, you arrogant asshole."

Jim huffs a laugh. "I miss you too, you stubborn jackass." He leans forward, hands closing around Leonard's biceps, and Leonard smiles helplessly, still looking down. "I came here last night to apologize, you know."

"Hell of a way to say it." Leonard lifts his hand to Jim's forearm, sliding the sleeve back, noting the mottled purple bands in the low light. "I thought..." He strokes over the bruises, seeing their fit to his fingers. "Doesn't matter what I thought."

"Bones." Jim's voice is a hushed wheedle, his hands sliding up to Leonard's shoulders. "It always matters." Leonard looks up, and Jim's whole face is soft, his smile inviting. He leans in and kisses Jim gently, careful of their bruised lips, and Jim smiles a little wider against his mouth and tenderly kisses him back.


End file.
